Antonia Macaro > Quotes

“Where Epictetus advised testing the value of things by asking whether they are in our power, Chrysippus recommended the following two questions: Is there good or bad at hand? Is it appropriate to react? For a Stoic, the answer to the first question would be yes only if it refers to our virtue. Otherwise it would always be no, because nothing external to us is truly good or bad. It follows that the answer to the second question would also be no, it is not appropriate to react.”
― Antonia Macaro, More Than Happiness: Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom for a Sceptical Age

“Marcus Aurelius writes: ‘The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the colour of your thoughts.”
― Antonia Macaro, More Than Happiness: Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom for a Sceptical Age

“It’s not by pursuing but by abandoning our desires that real satisfaction can be found.”
― Antonia Macaro, More Than Happiness: Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom for a Sceptical Age

“According to existential psychotherapist Irvin Yalom: ‘Death … itches all the time; it is always with us, scratching at some inner door, whirring softly, barely audibly, just under the membrane of consciousness. Hidden and disguised, leaking out in a variety of symptoms, it is the wellspring of many of our worries, stresses, and conflicts’.”
― Antonia Macaro, More Than Happiness: Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom for a Sceptical Age

“According to Seneca: ‘Turning pale, shedding tears, the first stirrings of sexual arousal, a deep sigh, a suddenly sharpened glance, anything along these lines: whoever reckons them a clear token of passion and a sign of the mind’s engagement is just mistaken and fails to understand that they’re involuntary bodily movements.”
― Antonia Macaro, More Than Happiness: Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom for a Sceptical Age

“The problem with rules, says Seneca, is that ‘if we give precepts for specific situations, the task will be endless’. Instead, we should be guided by philosophical principles, which are ‘concise and comprehensive’.”
― Antonia Macaro, More Than Happiness: Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom for a Sceptical Age

“The relationship between the calm absorption of meditation and insight is captured with a simile: just like we would not be able to see our reflection in a bowl of water that had been mixed with a dye, or was bubbling over a fire, or was muddy or had algae growing in it, in the same way we need a calm mind to see things clearly.”
― Antonia Macaro, More Than Happiness: Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom for a Sceptical Age

“Also, we need to help ourselves before we can benefit others: ‘that one who is himself sinking in the mud should pull out another who is sinking in the mud is impossible; that one who is not himself sinking in the mud should pull out another who is sinking in the mud is possible’, says the Buddha.”
― Antonia Macaro, More Than Happiness: Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom for a Sceptical Age

“When we experience physical or mental pain, the first thing to do is to acknowledge it and allow it to be there simply as a feeling that will pass. A popular and useful acronym to remember is RAIN: Recognise what is happening; Allow the experience to be there; Investigate with kindness; Non-identification. By doing this we can loosen the added layer of suffering and become better able to live with the pain.”
― Antonia Macaro, More Than Happiness: Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom for a Sceptical Age

“Seneca says: ‘if we are situated in the midst of a noisy city, let there be a preceptor at our side to contradict those who laud vast incomes and to praise instead the man who is wealthy on little and who measures wealth by how it is used.”
― Antonia Macaro, More Than Happiness: Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom for a Sceptical Age

“Picking threads common to both traditions, then, we could say that: the disease is our normal experience of life, in which we feel emotions and suffer; the cause is our incessant craving for and attachment to self and worldly things, due to our ignorance of the fundamental features of the world; the mechanism of change is educating ourselves to see things as they really are and cultivating non-attachment; the therapeutic procedure is the prescribed path, which in both cases includes cognitive, ethical and experiential aspects.”
― Antonia Macaro, More Than Happiness: Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom for a Sceptical Age

“Musonius Rufus writes that the soul is strengthened by first reminding ourselves of the right perspectives and then moulding our actions to this understanding, so that we stop pursuing things that are not truly good and stop avoiding things that only seem bad. In this way, we ‘won’t welcome pleasure and avoid pain … won’t love living and fear death, and … in the case of money, [we] won’t honor receiving over giving.”
― Antonia Macaro, More Than Happiness: Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom for a Sceptical Age

“Epictetus, for instance, challenged the idea that we improve solely by reading books and acquiring knowledge. Instead, we should demonstrate that the knowledge has really sunk in: ‘A builder does not come and say, “Listen to me talking on the art of building”, … but undertakes to build a house and proves by building it that he knows the art.”
― Antonia Macaro, More Than Happiness: Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom for a Sceptical Age

“Mistaken about good and bad, unwittingly taken in by things that are ultimately harmful for us, we suffer from something akin to a perceptual illusion, only much deeper and more problematic. It’s like the Müller-Lyer illusion: we can’t help experiencing the lines as of different length, even if we know they’re not.”
― Antonia Macaro, More Than Happiness: Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom for a Sceptical Age

“One discourse celebrates detachment with the image of a rhinoceros: ‘One whose mind is enmeshed in sympathy for friends and companions, neglects the true goal. Seeing this danger in intimacy, wander alone like a rhinoceros. … As a deer in the wilds, unfettered, goes for forage wherever it wants: the wise person, valuing freedom, wanders alone like a rhinoceros.”
― Antonia Macaro, More Than Happiness: Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom for a Sceptical Age

“Taking our knowledge to heart and really living it, however, can be difficult, as Seneca illustrated with a literally colourful analogy: ‘Just as some dyes are readily absorbed by the wool, others only after repeated soaking and simmering, so there are some studies that show up well in our minds as soon as we have learned them; this one, though, must permeate us thoroughly. It must soak in, giving not just a tinge of color but a real deep dye, or it cannot deliver on any of its promises.”
― Antonia Macaro, More Than Happiness: Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom for a Sceptical Age

“Seneca: ‘You need not raise your hands to heaven; you need not beg the temple keeper for privileged access, as if a near approach to the cult image would give us a better hearing. The god is near you – with you – inside you.”
― Antonia Macaro, More Than Happiness: Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom for a Sceptical Age

“Even if reason is not the sole good, however, the Stoics rightly draw our attention to how important it is for flourishing. We should exercise our ability to improve ourselves by managing, rather than eradicating, our emotions. While we can accept some worldly things as good or bad, it would seem wise to take up the suggestion to revise our value system and attribute less importance to superficial things like wealth, success and status. At the same time, we need to accept and find ways of dealing with the vulnerability and impermanence of the things we cherish the most.”
― Antonia Macaro, More Than Happiness: Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom for a Sceptical Age

“The advice to simplify our lives brings to mind William Morris’ dictum that we should have nothing in our houses that we don’t know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. More recently, Marie Kondo has suggested that unless an object ‘sparks joy’ in our heart, we should get rid of it.”
― Antonia Macaro, More Than Happiness: Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom for a Sceptical Age

“The Buddha, for his part, talks about the ‘eight worldly conditions’ that ‘keep the world turning around’, and around which the world turns. ‘What eight? Gain and loss, fame and disrepute, praise and blame, pleasure and pain’.”
― Antonia Macaro, More Than Happiness: Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom for a Sceptical Age

“In this way we will be reminded of their true nature and come to a more ‘objective’ judgement. It is, Marcus says, like: ‘seeing roasted meat and other dishes in front of you and suddenly realizing: This is a dead fish. A dead bird. A dead pig. Or that this noble vintage is grape juice, and the purple robes are sheep wool dyed with shellfish blood. Or making love – something rubbing against your penis, a brief seizure and a little cloudy liquid.”
― Antonia Macaro, More Than Happiness: Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom for a Sceptical Age

“In Buddhism, there are different levels of ethical teachings. The basic rules for good conduct are set out in the precepts. There are five precepts for lay people and rather more for monks. For lay people, the precepts advise refraining from: harming living creatures taking what is not given sexual misconduct false speech taking intoxicants that cause heedlessness”
― Antonia Macaro, More Than Happiness: Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom for a Sceptical Age

“One of the most quoted Stoic sayings must surely be Epictetus’ (which we first encountered on p. 39): ‘People are disturbed not by things, but by the views they take of things.”
― Antonia Macaro, More Than Happiness: Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom for a Sceptical Age

“The goal is not removing or promoting any particular mental state: it is to be able to live a rich life regardless of how we may be feeling at any particular time.39 This is explained through similes and practical exercises. In the ‘passengers on the bus’ metaphor, for instance, thoughts are compared to a bunch of critical and abusive passengers on a bus you’re driving. You’re in charge of the bus, though, so you can let the passengers shout as much as they like: that doesn’t stop you heading towards your valued destination.”
― Antonia Macaro, More Than Happiness: Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom for a Sceptical Age

“Seneca has a wealth of such reminders: ‘Everything is dangerous and deceptive and more changeable than the weather; everything tumbles about and passes at fortune’s behest into its opposite; and in all this tumult of human affairs there is nothing we can be sure of except death alone.’ Since there is ‘no way to know the point where death lies waiting for you, … you must wait for death at every point’.”
― Antonia Macaro, More Than Happiness: Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom for a Sceptical Age

“Thinking more generally about how things seem to others allows us to see their points of view better and to become more understanding. Marcus also writes that: ‘To feel affection for people even when they make mistakes is uniquely human. You can do it, if you simply recognize: that they’re human too, that they act out of ignorance … and that you’ll both be dead before long. And, above all, that they haven’t really hurt you. They haven’t diminished your ability to choose.”
― Antonia Macaro, More Than Happiness: Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom for a Sceptical Age

“Chrysippus’ questions might be useful. He asked: ‘Is there good or bad at hand? Is it appropriate to react?’ This could be supplemented with a few more, producing a kind of Chrysippan flowchart:”
― Antonia Macaro, More Than Happiness: Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom for a Sceptical Age

“Counterintuitive though it may sound, joy can also arise from properly understanding impermanence. The Buddha says: ‘When, by knowing the impermanence, change, fading away, and cessation of forms, one sees … with proper wisdom that forms … are all impermanent, suffering, and subject to change, joy arises.”
― Antonia Macaro, More Than Happiness: Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom for a Sceptical Age

“Could we react as Seneca tried to do? ‘I force my mind to pay attention to itself and not to be distracted by anything external. It does not matter what is making a noise outside, so long as there is no turmoil inside – as long as there is no wrangling between desire and fear, as long as greed is not at odds with self-indulgence, one carping at the other. … Only as the mind develops into excellence do we achieve any real tranquillity.”
― Antonia Macaro, More Than Happiness: Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom for a Sceptical Age

“Knowledge of precepts and understanding appropriate action can help us to live ethically. But even more important is cultivating what could be called ‘calm emotions’. For the Stoics, these were joy, wishing and caution. These are supposed to be a rational alternative to ordinary kinds of emotions: joy replaces pleasure, wishing replaces desire and caution replaces fear.”
― Antonia Macaro, More Than Happiness: Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom for a Sceptical Age